How to Clean Your Desk | Office Desk Organisation Tips

How To Clean Your Desk

When we think about what we have to clean, there’s one thing we all tend to overlook, and that is our office desk. We spend 5 days a week living, breathing, even eating on those desks, so it’s definitely worth the time to clean. Maintaining the surrounding office is important, but your office desk should always the priority since it is where we spend the most of our time. A tidy desk means a tidy mind, and having a clean office space will set you up on the right path to working effectively. If you’ve got questions on how to start or where to begin, we’ve got you covered with our office desk checklist.

1. Declutter and Organise: One thing many of us are guilty of is hoarding things on our desk. Containers from yesterday’s lunch, reports from 2 months ago, who knows. We put them there because it’s easier than putting them away, and a lot of the time half of what’s on our desk we don’t even need. Grab a bin, remain vigilant, and throw out the things you don’t have a purpose for. Any clutter will allow a buildup of dust and grime, and this makes your office space harder to clean. If you do genuinely need everything, make sure to organise it. Buy a desk folder or organiser, that way you can neatly arrange all your files on hand.

2. Disinfect: Between the spag bol you might have accidentally spilt on your keyboard, or the time you sneezed all over your desktop, your electronics will most certainly harbour some nasty germs. If you’re going to touch these items on a daily basis, you’d want to know they’re clean, it’s more hygienic for you and the people around you. Simply grab a disinfecting wipe and give your keyboard, mouse, phone and desktop a good clean. For the keyboard, you can use folded post it notes to flick out any crumbs wedged between the keys. Following that, you’ll want to give every visible surface of your desk a wipe down.

3. Clean out drawers and cupboards: This is also a common spot for dirt and grime in your office space, and the longer you leave it the worst it gets. Set up a vacuum with a small pipe nozzle, and vacuum the dust hidden inside your office drawers. When you’re done, give the interior and exterior a wipe with warm water and soap to clean any stains or spills you might have from food or drinks.

4. Clean your chair: Think about where your derriere may have been before you plonked it on your office chair. On a bus, on a train, in a restaurant, on a public bench. These are certainly not the most sanitary areas you can find. After many weeks and months of returning to the same chair, it’s bound to get a little dirty. Give your office chair a good wipe and then get vacuuming. Vacuum not only the crevices of the chair but the chair itself, as there’s sure to be some dust hidden in there.

Office Desk Organisation Tips

So earlier on we mentioned the importance of keeping your desk tidy and organised. However, telling someone to simply organise their office desk is easier said than done. Luckily, we’ve got a more comprehensive set of tips on how to keep your desk tidy.

♦ Change your desk’s configuration: If your desk is messy, the problem may be the layout. Rearrange your desk so that the equipment and supplies you use the most are within reach.

♦ Label Everything: This may be a little gimmicky, but a labeller can be the difference between a messy and organised office desk. Label your drawers and your shelves, it will always remind you of where things are supposed to go, and it will definitely help if you need someone to grab something from your desk for you, or potentially put it away.

♦ Get yourself a document tray: Loose sheets of paper is the source of a lot of the clutter on our desks. Don’t put them all into one drawer thinking you’ll sort them out later. It’ll never happen and you know it. Organise your documents with a document tray, you’ll thank yourself later when you’re not spending 10 minutes looking for a report.

♦ Organise your drawers: We put a lot of items in our office drawers, however the problem is that as it accumulates, the drawer get increasingly messy and it becomes more difficult to find needed items. Invest in some drawer organisers, it’ll make it much easier to find that little eraser, or set of stapler refills.

♦ Have a trash can on hand:To keep a tidy desk, it’s essential that you have a trash can under your desk. A lot of the time, we leave rubbish on our desk because we can’t be bothered walking up to the bin, convincing ourselves we’ll do it when we get up. Sometimes we forget, resulting in a grubby looking desk. Leave a bin underneath so you have no excuses.

♦ Scan it: For some, a document tray just isn’t enough, and are drowning in piles of documents. If you have this issue, every time you’re given a document, give it a scan, and organise it into folders on your computer. The file will be much easier to find, harder to lose, and won’t take up a single inch of space on your desk!

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